On the morning I visited Denver's
Tattered Cover Book Store, the place was bustling with activity. Customers
wandered up and down the central staircase, carrying books tucked under their
arms. They stopped to browse the spacious aisles, scanning titles on the
shelves. They lingered in the downstairs café, eating as they flipped through
magazines from the enormous periodical section.

The reason for the
crowds had partly to do with the influx of writers who had traveled to Denver
this weekend for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference,
and partly with the fact that it was opening day of the Major League Baseball
season—the sidewalks were filled with fans headed to nearby Coors Field, home
of the Colorado Rockies, and before the game, many of them stopped at Tattered
Cover. The store's location, in the LoDo (Lower Downtown) area of Denver, is a
success story of urban revitalization. This neighborhood is the oldest section
of Denver, and like the boom-and-bust economy of this western city, it has had
its fair share of downturns. In 1988, however, the city council created the
Lower Downtown Historic District with the mission to preserve the architectural
and historical assets of the area and to spur economic investment and growth.

Because of her
belief in this project and the need for community-oriented business districts,
Joyce Meskis, owner of Tattered Cover, purchased the warehouse building at 16th
and Wynkoop with a business partner in 1990, and subsequently moved her
administrative offices and the shipping-and-receiving operations for her Cherry
Creek store, which opened in 1974, to this location. A few years later, she
opened a second Tattered Cover store here, as well as a coffee shop and
newsstand. By 1996 the LoDo store had substantially expanded and today occupies
two floors over approximately twenty thousand square feet, including a café and
a dedicated special-events area that accommodates up to 250 people.

The store has since
become as much a destination for the local community as it has for writers.
From the moment you walk in, you feel a sense of ease and peacefulness. There
are overstuffed chairs and couches throughout both floors, as well as spacious
tables in the café area. The guiding aesthetic is a wonderful mix of the old
(worn hardwood floors downstairs, exposed rafters and hand-hewn support beams)
and the new (forest green carpet upstairs, a selection of organic and local
options at the café). The place feels vital. It feels vigorous.

The same could be
said of Meskis. Though soft spoken, she possesses an engaging and charming
personality that immediately put me at ease. She radiates a type of calm that
seems unflappable by the challenges of daily life. Yet in conversation she is
the first to poke fun at herself and the many obstacles she has faced in her
thirty-six years as a bookseller—not just in terms of running a business, but
also advocating for First Amendment rights and helping to nurture the social
and literary communities of Denver. In fact, Tattered Cover hosts more than
five hundred readings a year among its three locations. So it was fitting that
we sat down for our talk beside a fireplace at the back of Tattered Cover's
expansive event space, surrounded by black-and-white photographs of many of the
authors who've read at the store during its nearly four decades of existence.

How did you come to bookselling?
I came to bookselling accidentally. I
was intent on teaching at the university level.

Here in Denver?
No, I didn't have a place in mind. I
grew up in Chicago on the South Side, and I was very driven in terms of my
direction in life. I was determined I was going to get the zillionth degree,
and I wanted to have a life that was full of the usual things—marriage,
children. I could see myself at an excellent university teaching brilliant
students all day long, walking home with a briefcase in hand, kicking the fall
leaves as I approached my nice but not ostentatious house, hearing strains of
Chopin being played by my children through the open French doors. [Laughter.] It didn't quite work out that way.

What year was this?
I graduated high school in 1959. Then
I went to college.

Did you go to school in Chicago?
No, I went to Purdue [in Indiana]. I
was a math major, believe it or not. It was always a toss-up, and I eventually
shifted to English. My parents didn't have much money, but they were able to
pay for my first year. So I always had part-time jobs in the summers. But then
I married young, while we were in school, and I needed to get more work during
the school year. And soon I found myself working in bookstores to help pay the
tuition.

This was at Purdue?
Yes. But then my husband finished his
graduate degree and we moved to Colorado. All the while I was still working in
bookstores and libraries to help pay the tuition bills. And after some time—I
was in graduate school then—I woke up one morning literally staring at the
ceiling and said, "You idiot, don't you know that you've been doing what you love
all these years? Why don't you just get on with it?" So I dropped out of
graduate school and I got more serious about the book business. Around this
time the marriage ended, and I had two small children.

When was this?
1973. We were still pretty young, so
we didn't have much savings. But I took my half and began pursuing the book
business. Fast forward a year or so and a little store in the Cherry Creek area
of Denver came up for sale. It was called the Tattered Cover, and it was three
years old. It was a small storefront—only 950 square feet—and carried only
new books, despite its name. So, I did a little business plan on an envelope
with a pencil and figured I could pull it off. The bad news was that the owner
wanted what seemed like a huge amount of money at the time. But the good news
was that he was willing to carry the note, to be the banker. And the other
piece of good news was that he didn't want much money down. So I figured out
what I could do and I made an offer, which was promptly rejected.

Some time went by
and I decided, through the urging of a friend, to go see what was going on,
because there was no ownership transition of the store that was apparent. It
turned out that someone else had made a better offer earlier, but the deal had
fallen through. I don't know why the owner didn't come back to me afterward.
Who knows? But, to make a long story somewhat shorter, I made another offer. I
borrowed some money from my uncle in California and that offer was accepted in
September 1974, and ownership transferred to me.

Over the next several years you
expanded, however.
Yes, in increments.

Was this the plan from the
beginning, or did opportunities arise that allowed you to grow?
I can't speak for every bookseller
in the world, obviously. But wouldn't you say it's true that every bookseller
sort of has this dream of the bookstore in the sky—what it could be, how you
would want to have so much of what you loved and what your customers
appreciated, and then also have the opportunity to pique their interest in
different areas without betting the ranch?

Of course.
So I don't think I had a goal to
have a huge bookstore by any means. But I certainly wanted to grow it to a size
that would accommodate a fine representation of the wonderful books that are published.
So every time one of our neighbors in the building would move out, we would
take the space if it were available and if it were the right timing for us. We
were fortunate in that way. There was growth in the commercial area, there was
growth in what was possible in the book business in Denver, and we took the
opportunities.

But looking back, I think our biggest decision in
terms of growth in that first store was when we decided to move upstairs in the
original building. Quite a bit of space had become available on the second
floor and it was offered to us at a good price because second floor space—for
retail—is less desirable. So I pondered and pondered and pondered it. Because
the question was: How do you get the customers upstairs? And any time our
customers or colleagues found out that we were considering this, they thought
the sky was falling! They were very concerned and they gave me all kinds of
advice: "Don't do it, don't do it; your customers won't follow you. It will be
the end of the Tattered Cover. It will be dreadful."

Were you going to move the whole
store upstairs?
Oh, no. We were going to have both
floors. We were going to put in a staircase. And it's not like there weren't
stores that had tried this before. Obviously department stores were
multi-level. But it wasn't quite the same thing. Our colleagues and sales reps
and customers were just beside themselves in their advice to me about not doing
this. And I kept thinking to myself, "Well, I'm sure they've got good reasons
for this, and I can see both sides to the story..." but we needed the space, we
were growing, the rent was very compelling, and I simply didn't want to lose
that opportunity. And I thought, "We could make the staircase wider; we could
put books on the landings to draw people up the stairs; we could put
destination sections up there..." I said, "We can do this so it doesn't feel like
an interminable journey up these stairs."

Fast forward—we
did it. Our landlord had a charitable streak from time to time, and he loaned
me the money to put the staircase in. And the customers came upstairs. But our
colleagues were right in that it is much
harder to get people upstairs. Still, it worked. And it worked again. We took
again more space upstairs when it became available. So we grew from about 950
square feet to 6,000 square feet in that location. Then we were out of space.

Then, perhaps 1980
or so, I started looking around for space within the immediate area to move to.
And so I was looking, looking, looking, looking, nothing, nothing, nothing,
nothing. Moving a store is a serious decision, you know?

And no small undertaking.
And no small undertaking, even
though we'd become pretty used to barreling out walls and moving bookcases. In
fact, in my earliest years, after my husband and I were divorced, I lived in a
small place with the kids. I would go to the lumberyard and have my boards
pre-cut and then bring them back in the car. I had space in the alleyway, which
was next to the store, and I'd be banging away, making new bookcases. [Laughter.] I'd forgotten about that.

So, you know, we
were stuck. It didn't seem like anything was going to work. And then I had a
visit from a developer in town who had his eye on a vacant piece of property
next to a parking garage next to a department store that was across the street
from a shopping center. It was an open field at that point, and he was planning
on putting in ground-floor retail and then a little bit of an expansion of the
parking garage next door above on the roof—a few extra stories of parking. And
so he said, "I'll cut you a good deal. Would you like to move over here?" It
was only half a block away and it was brand new space—two floors, totaling
about 11,000 square feet. This was double what we currently had. And he was
willing to do a lot for us to get us over there, and I thought, "Okay. Let's go
for it."

So we got serious
about that and we were planning to sublet the old store location of 6,000
square feet. But then the bookstore grapevine came through town and we learned
that Pickwick Books was considering bringing a store to Denver. You probably
don't remember Pickwick Books.

No, I don't.
Pickwick Books was a new
development arm of the Dayton Hudson Corporation, which owned B. Dalton back
then. And Crown Books—do you remember Crown Books?

I do.
Well, Crown Books was very
successful opening up in the Washington D.C. area. They were one of the first major
discounters and they, were really doing a number on the independent stores, as
well as on the B. Dalton and Walden stores. So my assumption back
then—"assumption," keep that in mind—was that when the powers that be got
together and saw what was happening with Crown in their locations, they got
nervous and started to think of ways they could counteract this trend. So B. Dalton—at
that time owned by the Dayton Hudson Corporation—decided to do an experiment.
They had purchased a small, regional chain in southern California called
Pickwick. Then they converted those stores to B. Dalton stores and they retired
the Pickwick name. But they still owned it. It's my understanding that by still
owning that name they decided to use it for their trial run of a new bookstore
model: heavy discounting, using Crown as the model. They were going to place it
in three or four cities around the country to test market it, and one of those
cities was Denver. [Laughter.]

This was now in the 80s?
This would be the early-to-mid 80s,
because we were supposed to move in '82 but there was construction delay. So we
moved in January '83 into the new space. And then we learned that Crown was
doing this roll-out across the country and that one of the cities was also
going to be Denver.

Cue ominous music.
Right! [Laughter.] So I took my calculator home and tried to figure
out what they knew about bookselling that I didn't know. And I couldn't see how
we could maintain our position. So I thought, "Well, we can't discount. But we
can give the bargain-conscious customer something else. We can go heavily into
bargain books—remainders." But we needed more space to do that. So we decided
to keep the old store space and put it primarily into bargain books. That's
also about the same time that we decided to go more heavily into periodicals and
sidelines. Anyway, it turned out that business thrived.

Tattered Cover is often cited as one of the first independent stores
to develop an author reading series. Were readings a part of Tattered Cover
from the beginning?
It happened early, but it happened in
an unusual sort of way. As I said before, I had worked in bookstores when I was
in school. And when I bought Tattered Cover we were not really seeking author
events because I had seen too often a lovely gathering where nobody came, and I
didn't want to put the author in that kind of position. Well, one day I got a
call from our sales rep for Little, Brown and she said, "Joyce, I've got an
offer to make to you. Ansel [Adams] is going to be on his way to see Georgia
[O'Keeffe] in New Mexico and he's going to stop in Denver. Would you like to
have him for a signing?" I held my breath and said, "Absolutely. We would be
delighted to have a signing." Though I was completely terrified. I had heard
that he was very particular about the plates on the books and that he would go
to the printers about it, and so I thought he must be a difficult and demanding
personality. But when he came he couldn't have been sweeter. Just wonderful.
And, of course, the line was out the door. I was sold at that point. The magic
of that moment—of seeing the author and his people—was just fabulous.

I remember when
Tom Wolfe came for The Right Stuff. We had a wonderful group of folks waiting for him, and events just
became a part of our community experience. Every signing—every one—is
different. To me, there are no two that are exactly the same. You can make all
the predictions you want. There are some elements, of course, that are common
to any signing. But when it comes to a particular reader meeting a particular
writer, a particular connection is made and there's nothing like it that has
ever existed before. It cements the building blocks of the whole experience of
reading and publishing and writing. It's just wonderful.

Are there any other authors or
events that you found particularly special?
Once we had acquired the second
floor in the original building, we did all the signings up there. And at one
point we had the opportunity to host Buckminster Fuller—a forward-looking
architect and writer of note. As it turned out, he was on his last tour. He was
quite elderly at the time. And when he walked in the door and I saw how frail
he was, I thought, "He's never going to make those stairs."So I said, "We'll bring the signing table
downstairs." But he said, "No, no, no, no, no." He was going to go up those
stairs and sit at that table and greet his admirers. And he did so. It was a
daytime event, and his admirers almost genuflected when they came up to the
signing table. It was that type of experience. And as the line was coming to a
close, his adult grandson, who was traveling with him, said to me, "Do you have
a large pan that you could put some warm water in for granddad to soak his
hand?" It turns out that he'd broken a finger or two but he insisted on coming
to sign. That was really remarkable.

Do you also do nonliterary events here that are community oriented?
When we're not doing signings here [in
the events space] or when there is a gap for some reason, we will rent this
space out to the community; we also have a minimal rental rate for nonprofits.
And sometimes we'll just let some organizations use it, such as the Lighthouse
Writers Group. They meet here once in a while. So, yes, it's a community
meeting space.

Another thing I'd like to talk with
you about—because it has to do both with the local community here in Denver
and the broader literary community—is the First Amendment case that you were
involved in. Can you talk a bit about how this came about?
In 2000 we were approached by a DEA
agent who served us with a subpoena to turn over some records. But the
subpoena—upon sending it to our attorney—turned out not to be an official
subpoena. After my attorney looked at it, he indicated to me that this type of
subpoena was not actionable. So he called the agent, informing him that in
order to obtain access to the records a proper subpoena would need to be
presented.

But the agent
indicated that he didn't want to take that course of action. So we thought that
was the end of that. But three weeks later, my attorney, Dan Recht, called and
said, "Joyce, I got a call from an individual in the Adams County DA's office,
saying that a search warrant is in the works on Tattered Cover, in the hopes of
getting the sales records for a particular customer." And I said, "A search
warrant? That is immediately
actionable." I knew that much about the law. But he said, "Don't get excited
yet; I asked for some extra time. We have until the end of the business day
tomorrow to come up with a response. So I want you to think about this
overnight, and I'll call you tomorrow afternoon.

The decision was whether to allow
it?
The decision was about how we were
going to respond. Because there's no decision to be made about "allowing" a
search warrant—once issued, the authorities can act on it. So the next day I
was in the office and I got a visit from one of our floor managers. She said,
"Joyce, there are police officers here with a search warrant and they want to
see you." I said, "That's impossible." And she said, "No, it isn't; they're
here."

So you began shredding all your records, right?
No. [Laughter.] I said, "Okay, send them upstairs and we'll
deal with this." There were four or five individuals, all dressed in civvies.
They weren't jack-booted police officers or anything like that. In fact, they
were dressed like booksellers—one had a ponytail; they wore tennis shoes. They
were all completely gentlemanly. But they had a search warrant. So I said, "May
I call my attorney?" They said, "Yes." And when I called Dan he absolutely hit
the ceiling: "They can't do that! They gave us until the end of the business
day today! Fax me a copy of the search warrant."

So while the
warrant was faxing over, I was sitting with the officers and talking about the
First Amendment and the Kramerbooks case [in which independent counsel Kenneth
Starr tried unsuccessfully to obtain Monica Lewinsky's purchase records from an
independent bookstore in Washington, D.C.]. They had a mission and the mission
was going to be accomplished. They said, "This isn't about you." I said, "I know it's not about me." They said, "You're perfectly
legal." I said, "I know we're
perfectly legal." They said, "You can sell anything that's constitutionally
protected." I said, "I know we
can sell anything that's constitutionally protected—that's what we sell." This
went on: "But we need this information." "Well, I see that as a First Amendment
issue." "It's not a First Amendment issue." "Yes, it's a First Amendment
issue."

Meanwhile, Dan got
the copy of the search warrant and he asked to talk with the lead officer. So I
put him on the phone and they went at it. While Dan was talking to him, I kept
talking to the other officers. Finally, at the very end, I said, "What are the
books that you're after, anyway? How do you even know we stock them?" And one
officer looked me right in the eye and he said, "You'll special-order anything,
won't you?" [Laughter.] Got
me.

Throughout this
meeting they kept saying, "We just want this one record, we just want this one
record from this one customer." And I asked, "What if you don't find what
you're looking for?" And he said, "We'll take the next step then." Which I
translated as: The search warrant goes into effect and they look at more
records and more records.

Somehow, some way,
Dan was able to persuade them to hold off for ten days. So they left the store,
Dan and I conversed, and within a heartbeat Dan filed for a temporary
restraining order in the court, and we got it. This enabled us to file suit
against them—to get a judicial opinion on whether the search warrant could
move forward or not.

Whether it truly was an infringement of First Amendment rights?
Right. That's what was up for debate.

Was it the individual's right to privacy being defended, or was it
your right?
It was the individual's right. I asked
the officer, "Why don't you just go to the individual and get us out of the
loop?" But the officer replied, "He's not going to tell us anything." You see,
we didn't know anything about the case. We assumed it had something to do with
drugs because the DEA had been involved earlier, but that was all we knew.

So they suspected that this
individual had purchased a particular title, but they needed to verify that
fact with you.
That's right. They wanted confirmation.
When we learned more, as our case moved through the judicial process, we found
out that it had to do with a meth lab. There'd been suspicion of a meth lab in
a trailer home in a trailer park in Adams County, and so the officers had been
able to get a search warrant for the premises on probable cause that illegal
activity was happening there. As they suspected, they found a small meth lab in
the bedroom of the trailer home. They also found in the trash what they called
a "mailing envelope" from Tattered Cover. The mailing envelope had a mailing
label on it, and there was an invoice number on the label. There was also the
name of the person to whom the contents of the envelope were addressed, who
lived at the trailer home. But there was no indication what had been in the envelope.

Because there was no invoice?
Correct. Inside the trailer home, near
the meth lab, were two books on how to make meth. And so the officers said,
"Aha!" They wanted to put the two pieces of evidence together to tie it to that
specific person. They wanted to know who occupied that bedroom, because there
were four or five people who lived in that trailer.

So Tattered Cover was within its legal rights to sell that book; the
officers simply wanted to identify which individual had bought it so that that
purchase could be used as circumstantial evidence to prove who had been making the meth.
Right. So they went to get a search
warrant for us after we were unwilling to turn the information over with the
unofficial subpoena. But because Tattered Cover is a legitimate business, the
DA's office in Adams County may have felt there wasn't any danger of us
destroying evidence—which is normally one of the reasons why a search would be
necessary. Instead, they wanted the officers to do more due diligence
first—dust the books for fingerprints, interview people in the trailer park to
see who lived in that trailer, and so on.

So they went and
did the fingerprinting, which yielded no results. In fact, one of the books
still had its brown wrapper around it. Hadn't been opened, hadn't been cracked.
And the other one looked like it hadn't been cracked—the spine was clean.

But the officers
wanted to take the shortcut. And since they were on hold with the Adams County
DA's office, they went to Denver for the search warrant. They could do that
because we're located in the city and county of Denver. So now we're in the
Denver district court and we find out that this is going to go on for a while.
Dan's is a small office. He doesn't have a big corporate office to absorb
costs, and he was charging us little. Meanwhile, we were getting five-dollar
donations from customers to help pay legal fees. And Chris Finan from the
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression stepped in. And our pal
Neal Sofman in San Francisco held a fund-raiser at A Clean Well-Lighted Place
for Books with Daniel Handler, who writes as Lemony Snicket, along with some
other authors to raise money for us.

So this was becoming a national issue.
It became a national phenomenon. We
were getting calls from national press. I never saw anything like it.
Meanwhile, all we're trying to do is sell books. [Laughter.]

Yet 90 percent of your time was spent on this issue.
And our customers—every time we'd
been involved in cases like this before there was press, and each time I
thought, "This time the customers are not going to understand and we're going to
go out of business." I thought for sure that would be the case with this one. I
mean, a meth lab? We don't like meth labs. But that was not the point of the
case.

So that judge in
the district court gave half a loaf to each side. In his decision, he ruled
that authorities could not have the thirty days' worth of material/background
on this customer that they were seeking. But the Tattered Cover would have to
turn over the record of what was mailed to that customer on that one invoice.
So then we had a decision as to whether to appeal our case to the Colorado
Supreme Court or not. And we did.

To skip to the end
of that story, we got a 6-0 decision in our favor. One judge abstained; I
have no reason why.

How long did the entire process last?
Two years. It was decided in 2002. And
once it was over, the authorities finally went out and got the guy. They put
him in prison for a number of years.

Without even needing this evidence.
Right. By the time we were into the
case we had several pro bono attorneys. And many of them were criminal
[defense] attorneys. They looked at the facts and they said, "They don't need
this. We've had less evidence for some of our clients who got put away." At
about the same time—midway through the case—a couple of local young filmmakers
asked us if they could do a documentary. So they followed us around for the
second year of the case. But when the case was over and they'd finished their
piece and were trying to sell it to PBS, they found out that they needed to get
eight or nine more minutes of film. So they came to us and said, "We would like
to have an aftermath panel with all the parties. It would be you, Dan, the lead
officer, their attorney, and someone from the University of Denver law school
who would moderate the panel. We'll do it at the Press Club. Would you be
willing to do that?" So we were all set to go when Dan got a phone call from
the public defender who had represented the guy who was accused and convicted
of making the meth. He asked Dan to confirm what was in the package.

Because of course you had to have known what the book was this whole
time.
But the guy who'd been put in prison
hadn't known anything about this case while it was going on. He had no idea.
They'd arrested him after the case was over. But evidently he'd told his public
defender what had been in the package, and when the police had finally
interviewed him he'd also told them. But they didn't believe him, evidently.

So the public
defender said to Dan, "Would you confirm the title?" And Dan said, "Well, we
could if we had permission from the individual. But it's not something we
really want to do. We feel that this is private. He can say what the book was
if he wants to, but in any case we would certainly need written permission." So
the next thing you know a letter is delivered from the guy in prison, with his
permission to reveal the contents of the package.

After the phone
call, Dan said to me, "Maybe we should do that." And I said, "No! We spent two
years of our lives on this thing. We're not going to make more hay out of
this." Meanwhile, the filmmakers have set up the panel. You can actually see
this film if you ever care to. They play it nearly every September during
Banned Book Week.

So there we are on
the panel. A whole bunch of people are in attendance. It's a small room at the
Denver Press Club, but it's filled up. And when we get to the
question-and-answer period, who should be in the audience but the public
defender.... [Raises eyebrows.]
He stands up, identifies himself as the attorney for the convicted individual,
and he says—I'm paraphrasing here—"Mr. Recht, you have received a letter from
my client giving you permission to identify what was in the package, haven't
you?" Dan says, "Yes." "And would you do so?" And Dan says, "We would never
identify what was in the package unless we had explicit permission from whoever
owned the package, whoever bought the book." And the public defender says, "But
you have that permission, don't you?" And Dan says, "Yes, but again I want you
to know that we would certainly never put this information out there unless we
had permission." "Well?" the public defender asks. "Okay, then," Dan finally
says. "The book was on Japanese calligraphy."

That's amazing.
It's true. The guy was a tattoo
artist. [Smiles.]

Let's talk a bit about the future next. You can't open a
bookselling-related periodical and not see at least one story about e-readers
and Kindles and digital bookselling. Do you have any intention of selling
digital books?
I think it's very apropos of the
times. We do sell digital downloads on our Web site. We can sell them for most
of the e-readers except the Kindle, which is proprietary to Amazon. There are
many issues with regard to books being produced in this way, but as far as
independent stores' being competitive with Amazon it's a pricing issue. Though
we can sell these digital downloads, we can't really be competitive because
Amazon is selling below cost. We just don't have the financial wherewithal to
sustain that.

I've always been a
firm believer that information will move in the most user-friendly manner
possible. And when mass-market paperbacks became a big deal in the United
States after World War II, there were a number of people who said that this was
going to be the end of good publishing. That didn't happen. Times will change,
and we do need to face the challenges that are before us and still maintain our
care and our community service to the people who are so important to us—the
writers and the readers. And I think that ink on paper between boards, well
done, will always be, at least in the foreseeable future, part of our social
construct. Reading a book, as you well know, is more than a cerebral
experience—it's a physical experience. And while an e-reader has its place in
many people's lives, there's nothing like holding a book and seeing the pages
turn in a way that is not electronic. [Laughter.]

When I think of a
book, there are many forms that it takes. When we talk about fine literature
and poetry and use that as an example, the soul of that book is its content and
the message of the author. So that's first. What holds that message—whether it
is a computer, ink on paper, or an iPad or a Kindle or a Nook or a Sony
Reader—has more significance in some circumstances than others. I would prefer
to read my fiction and a great deal of my nonfiction in ink on paper. If I'm on
an airplane and going on vacation, I might choose something else. But if it's a
cookbook, I need pictures. I want to be able to get a little of what I'm
cooking on the page. [Laughter.]
So, while it may be mixing metaphors a bit, you're not going to stand in the
way of the freight train of change. However, I think it's really important to
be up front laying the track as best you can in the right direction for the
benefit of the readers who we serve.

Finally, what is your favorite
thing about the day-to-day of bookselling?
When I'm walking through the sales
floor and a little kid goes up to the shelf and spots a book and says, "Oh,
wow! You've got that book!" To know you've played some small role in making
that happen—there's nothing like it. I've been in this business a long time
and I still get chills down my back when things like this occur.

Just this morning we received a letter
from a young girl—a ten-year-old fifth grader—who wrote a poem about books,
and loving to be in this store, and the cushy chairs, and her favorite step
that she likes to sit on. "Books, books, books, books," she wrote. "Read, read,
read, read." That's what she said. [Smiles.] It is a remarkable profession, trade, and way of life.

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INSIDE TATTERED COVER BOOK STORE
What are the best-selling sections
in your stores?
Backlist and genre fiction, new
fiction, new nonfiction, and children's books. The next tier would include
history, religion, and travel.

What for you is the most unique or
defining aspect of Tattered Cover as a bookstore?
The dedication of its booksellers to
providing a special comfortable "place," physical and mental, where customers
can browse a vast selection of ideas in print.

Is there anything special you look
for in terms of an author event?
The Tattered Cover offers a wide
variety of ideas presented in the form of author events—over five hundred each
year—including the very literary, thought provoking, humorous, topical,
educational, controversial, and political, to name just a few. All of this
said, first and foremost, the author's work has to have an audience motivated
to come to hear the author speak. We can provide the venue, the publisher can
provide a few dollars to advertise the event, but in the end it's the author
who is the draw.

What role does technology play in
your store?
If one considers the modern printing
press a technological wonder, not to mention the various elements of
production, these are the very basis of our existence as a business. However,
technology, as we tend to think of it today, plays a significant role in
database information and searches, communication, business record keeping,
marketing, and, increasingly, the presentation and download of "the book"
itself into handheld and/or computer devices.

What has been the biggest challenge
for Tattered Cover in the last decade?
Maintaining a strong customer base that
will continue to support the booksellers; offering customers a substantial inventory
in a faltering economy and a highly competitive atmosphere.

What is the most important service
that bookstores provide their communities?
The free flow of ideas in print through
a sense of place within the community, offering an opportunity for people and
ideas to come together.

Jeremiah Chamberlin teaches writing at the University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor. He is also the editor of the online journal Fiction Writers
Review.